Jedi & Jealousy
by GreenMaureen
Summary: Daria Gallia is perfectly happy to be a non-force-sensitive girl living on Tholoth. However, her hypocritical mother is quite disappointed in her for not following the example of her Jedi aunt or diplomat grandparents. She wants her daughter to be worthy of their famous family, but Dari has other ideas...


A/N: Another Star Wars story! This one's set in the Old Republic/Rise of the Empire Era. It will be much longer and more detailed than the first one. Hopefully, I'm not creating a continuity issue with Tholoth. I searched online for a description and couldn't find one, so I thought it would be okay to make up my own…

On an unrelated topic, sorry about the random squiggly lines. Word thinks it knows what I want the page to look like, and it won't let me get rid of them.

I'm probably the only one in the galaxy to say this, but my life would probably be easier if I had been born with Force sensitivity.

See, it doesn't bother me personally. I don't really care about being able to move things with my mind or read people's thoughts. You can't miss what you've never had.

My mother is a different story, though. She was born Force-sensitive, and so was her twin sister, Adi. Their parents-politicians-were proud of this and wanted to have a Jedi in the family, but they couldn't bear to part with both of their daughters. So they sent Adi off to the Jedi Temple, and kept my mother here.

Everything was fine for a few years, but then my mother got jealous. She had all these amazing Force powers, but she couldn't figure out how to use them. My parents got her a job as a junior Senatorial aide when she wasn't much older than me, but she wasn't satisfied with it. She contacted the Jedi Temple and asked if they would let her train there, but they said she was too old. After that, she started doing all these crazy stunts. She controlled people's minds to make them do stupid things and got into speeder chases with the police. Eventually, she Force-pushed Senator Palpatine of Naboo down the stairs, and her parents hit the roof. The Senator forgave her, but her parents sent her back to live on Tholoth. Then she met my father, who she hasn't told me much about except that he left her after a few weeks.

He was already gone when she found out she was going to have me. My mother, unlike most recently single older teenagers, was ecstatic about having a baby. If she couldn't be a Jedi, her child would

Then I came along, and it took her about a year to realize that I had no Force ability whatsoever. Once she realized I had no potential as a Jedi, she tried several crazy schemes to get rid of me—contacting the father, trying to get her parents to take me to Coruscant, even claiming she was too mentally unstable to raise a child—but they all failed. She was stuck with a regular old non-Force-sensitive daughter.

You might guess that my life at home is not exactly pleasant. My mother, apart from being deeply disappointed in me, had a terrible temper. I'm the first to admit that I do too. Tholoth is a tiny world—just one small, sandy continent in a vast ocean—and I'm not convinced it's big enough for both of us.

Take this morning, for example.

"Daria!" she shrieked up the stairs to my attic bedchamber. "If you're not down here, dressed, FIVE MINUTES AGO, you're finding another way to school!"

I rolled my eyes. As it happens, I was awake and fully dressed. I was at my desk, reading a holographic map and trying to figure out the quickest route from here to Coruscant. It was a stupid, make-believe game I often played, imagining that I was an independent and brilliant starship pilot, free of my mother's iron will.

"Fine, I'll get my own," I shouted at her. WHOMP! WHOMP! She stomped out of the tiny, wood-and-brick house. BANG! That was the door, sounding like a blaster rifle. Another muffled bang was the passenger door of the speeder. Finally, I heard the whine of the speeder as she sped off to work.

I checked my chrono. I still had a few minutes before I needed to leave for school if I planned to go by levtrain. I never understood why my mother was obsessed with driving me to school when I could get there so much more easily by myself. She was acting stubborn and unreasonable.

I went downstairs to make myself some caf and grab a muja to eat on the way. On the kitchen counter was a datapad—my mother's. I raised my eyebrows. She must have left it there when she flew off in a rage. I picked it up—she had left it carelessly unlocked. I knew I shouldn't, but I started reading the most recent file—a hypercomm message addressed to her parents.

_Dear Mother and Father:_

_ I know we have not been on the best of terms in recent years, but, not wishing to burn bridges, I would like to reach out to you again. I sincerely apologize for my immature behavior years ago, and hope that you will forgive me._

_ As a peace offering, I would like to send you my daughter, Daria. She could use some polishing to become a proper and polite young woman, and what better place is there to learn manners than the Galactic Senate? I know that you, Father, have been searching for a new aide since my unfortunate departure, and I sincerely believe that Daria could assist you in this capacity._

_ Looking forward to your reply, I remain_

_ Your devoted daughter,_

_ Tali_

Stang! My first instinct was to laugh. "Sincerely apologize?" I couldn't imagine my mother speaking those words in her life. And "could use some polishing?" she was one to talk, she who pushed a Senator down the stairs.

However, my situation was very real and not very funny. I had my mother's temper. I could no more become a Senator than become a Jedi.

Inspecting the message, I discovered that it had already been sent. There was no reply yet, no deadline. But I needed to be prepared for the worst. I needed to have my own plan for my life before my mother could put hers into action.

But first I had to go to school, so I did. I think I did a good job putting the hypercomm message out of my mind. My classes are easy for me, because I fortunately inherited my grandparents' intelligence, if not their temperaments. Social interaction is a little more difficult. Nevertheless, today was a decent, fairly non-boring day.

Unfortunately, I still don't have a plan. And I need one, before my mother can tear me away from the sandy plains and rocky shores of Tholoth and send me to a concrete jungle of viperous politicians. I'll sleep on it tonight and hopefully act in the morning.


End file.
